6. 3D-TV: Would like to use 3D-TV from the following souces: Blu-Ray, Sky-3D Channel and my Fujifilm REAL 3D-W3 camera (takes .mpo 3D images and 3D HD Movies.

7. Environment: TV is to be used in my living room next to a large window.

8. Technology: I am interested in a passive 3D-TV as the active type causes headaches. I am therefore considering TVs from LG, Philips and Toshiba where Philips is the most likely to be purchased as LG does not support Sat USB recording and Toshiba does not have USB recording at all on their passive sets. DVB-S2 and DVB-C Tuner are important.

My Questions:
UK-TV uses a different EPG-Technology to that used in Germany. I have found that most standard Sat-Recievers will only show the Now and Next programs with UK-TV channels. Can the Philips TV properly interpret the EPG used on UK broadcasts (BBC One, etc.)?

I notice that your TVs obtain TV-Listings over the internet. Does this mean that the EPG issues are not relevant as long as I have the TV connected to the Internet? Please explain if this system will work with both BBC and German channels.

I originally planned to get an LG 42" TV-Set, but I was put off by the fact that their DVR USB Recording feature does not work with Sat-programs. Do the Philips TVs fully support Sat-TV recording? I have a little standalone Sat receiver (Avanit SHD5) and that allows Sat USB recording to *.ts files readable on a PC). That device cost me 70 Euro so why do TVs with uSB recording make it impossible to use the USB recordings on a PC as well?

The members of the LG support forum are angry about the lack of Sat. support on their TVs and LG does not appear to be interested in fixing this feature. When I came here to research the 42PFL7606K, I was pleasantly surprised to find Philips engineers actually taking notice of customer wishes and adding features that were asked for. That is a major point in favour of Philips.

As I also have an AVCHD Camcorder, can I place the SDHC card from that in the card reader and play the recordings (*.mts)?

What is important for me is the ability to use the BBC iPlayer as an App in SmartTV. Reading through the forums, it appears that such an App is available. I use a VPN service to give me a UK IP. Is it possible to set a proxy in the Internet settings as that is all I need to be able to play the iPlayer (I currently do this with my Wii).

After some research, the Philips 42PFL7606K is now top of my list, although I am concerned about the bugs reported on Amazon by several users. However, bugs reported on this forum do seem to get acted upon, so it looks like the bugs reported on Amazon are likely to get fixed.

That leaves the possible problem of clouding on the Philips TV which several people have reported here. Are there ways of preventing this and does it affect everybody or only those from a bad batch?

I look forward to your responses and hope to buy a Philips 3D-TV in a few days.

I'm not an intense user like you are. I'm only using the 42PFL7606K to watch tv via cable so I can only answer a few of your questions.

You can choose between dhcp and manual ip configuration. I did not see an option to enter a proxy there, just the normal primary and secondary dns, gateway, netmask settings.

The comments on Amazon are both, right and wrong. For example, some users reported that the sound does come from the right side. That's because the 42"+ models speaker does not sit in the middle. The thing is, it is true but the question is, would I have noticed it without knowing about it? It feels like I can hear where the sound is coming from because _I know_ it's coming from the right side.

When it comes to backlight bleeding then I'm one of the unlucky guys. Depending on which Smart Picture setting I pick it backlight bleeding is either almost non-existant to horrible. Unfortunately for me it's horrible in the best preset (Cinema) while others report it's the best mode for them.
What disappoints me is that support was unable to help me without me taking a picture of the problem. I didn't know that you need to have a digital cam to get support for your TV?! Maybe they should bundle one if it's mandatory (lol...).

Would I buy the same TV again? Probably not. Would I buy Philips again? Probably yes. The sad truth is, every manufacturer has their own annoying problems and we are kind of hardware beta testers. It took me weeks to decide till I realised that. The only thing I would really really do different is take 300€ more and get the model with Ambilight 3.

Thanks for your reply. After much deliberation, I have now ordered the Philips 42PFL7606K and expect it to be delivered later this week. I hope there will be no bleeding or clouding issues with the TV.

If the TV does not support the manual entry of a proxy (normally standard on such devices, my Wii has it), I will have to setup a proxy through the router. I will report here when I have it setup.

I will set the TV to have its local country to be UK so that the BBC iPlayer will work.

I have now received my new TV. I actually got the 42PFL7666K/02 which is basically the same as the 7606, yet with better speakers and built-in WiFi.

I originally tried to set UK as the home country (as my Sat reception is via Astra 2), but unfortunately, German Digital Cable-TV was not recognised. Analogue Cable worked, but not digital. I then reinstalled the TV giving Germany as my home country and then German cable TV worked.

Let me answer some of my own questions here, as this might help others:

1. I am glad to say that the internet based EPG does give me full EPG data for UK-Based programs (BBC, etc), whereas the broadcast based UK-EPG only gives me the now and next programs as expected. The online EPG is therefore a good thing in this respect.

2. The Philips TV will handle USB recording from both cable and sat signals. However, the USB recording feature is not exactly comfortable.

3. I tried a SD Card from my AVCHD Camcorder. Although the TV has its own SD-Card reader, SD-Cards are not recognized in it so I had to use a USB card reader instead. The TV was unable to playback the recordings on that card. Given the popularity of this format on modern Camcorders, I hope Philips, will add support for the .mts format in a future firmware upgrade.

4. As the TV does not have any ability to define a web proxy (unlike my Wii console for example), I have been unable to determine if the BBC iPlayer will work yet. However, the Wii BBC iPlayer does work very well with the Philips TV.

5. I have been finding a number of bugs and stability problems. I will document and report them in the appropriate places (not sure if the Philips engineers would bother to read this post without a better defined subject line). The most buggy part is the "Programme Guide" with a number of problems.

6. Luckily, I have not noticed any clouding issues so far, but I have not really tested this properly yet, either.

Just in case someone is reading this from Philips technical support, I would like to report a major problem, with the Philips support website.

Not exactly customer friendly, please correct this. I downloaded both firmware files (for 7606 and 7666) and performed a binary compare of the files. They were identical so it looks like it is fine to download the 7606K/02 firmware as well.

I am still testing the TV so will give more detailed info on the bugs I found on this forum. I understand that complicated products like this may still have bugs at first. Anyone using Microsoft products know that. It is the speed with which reported bugs are fixed that defines a good company.

EPG UK Sat prog D

[QUOTE=Peter Walker;17266]I have now received my new TV. I actually got the 42PFL7666K/02 which is basically the same as the 7606, yet with better speakers and built-in WiFi.

I originally tried to set UK as the home country (as my Sat reception is via Astra 2), but unfortunately, German Digital Cable-TV was not recognised. Analogue Cable worked, but not digital. I then reinstalled the TV giving Germany as my home country and then German cable TV worked.

Let me answer some of my own questions here, as this might help others:

1. I am glad to say that the internet based EPG does give me full EPG data for UK-Based programs (BBC, etc), whereas the broadcast based UK-EPG only gives me the now and next programs as expected. The online EPG is therefore a good thing in this respect.

Hi Peter, I too am in Germany and use Sat and Cable and actually UK TV , German TV and Chinese with the 50 PFL 7956. I only see German programs in the EPG, none of my UK programs. It lists those that I watch and those I do not, i.e.e not from my Favourites. How did you get the EPG to show UK programs from teh Sat? e..g. BBC1, ITV 1 etc..? I want to record programs from there and cannot get it to show. I did try editing a program in the EPG list searching for BBC and overwrriting it, but havent tried recording from there yet. TV was broken, did not populate EPG at all, nore record reliably so after 6 weeks got a new one from Philps and just received and re isntalled.

Hi David,
I did not have to do anything special for the EPG. If you select "Watch TV", the EPG shows the German (Cable) channels. After you select "Watch Sat", the EPG then shows the Sat programs. You have to make sure the channels are recognized as well. There appears to be a bug in the EPG where some channels are not recognized properly. e.g. ITV1+1 is not recognized and the system looks for TV1+1 instead. This can be fixed manually.

Sorting the channels is the most laborious job, and I hope the PC based program for sorting the channels is released soon.

By the way, with a trick it is possible to get the BBC iPlayer to work as well.

Thanks for the quick reply. I have watch sat, but only see lots of channels, mostly German starting with ARD etc.. but see none of the english ones in the EPG. It lists many I do not watch, and which are not in my favourites, but only 3 pages or so total channels listed in EPG. Not the 3500 channels I see before selecting the 30 or so into favourites, but seems random mostly German channels none of teh english ones. I am not sure whet it is I am njot doing. I am for example watching sat TV and then go to home screen and select EPG. Is there any other setting I am missing? I tried channel search for BBC 1for example and overrode the ARD listing in the epg, it did show all BBC1 programs but when I tried to record it records the ARD program not teh one I overrode it with BBC1. Thanks

Sounds to me like you have not yet sorted the channels. You can do this via the find button.

I did this by first going through all the channels and marking the ones I like as favorites. Then I changed the list to show just the favorites and then used Options/Reorder to sort the programs in the order I wanted. It is important to change the number associated with the channel. I ended up with a list like this:

Thanks, I did select the favorites but did not sort them Is there a Limit to max number of programs in the EPG? Mine only seems to show a limited number and is this why if not sorted it cannot show those further down teh list? Why though would it show many programs not in my favourites and also many double of the German ones like RTL2 etc.. show twice one below the other... In the help page it says select update program guide but there is no menu to do that. I am lost on how to show just the programs I want in the EPG and not all teh ones I do not want and many of which are not in my favorites.

Any ideas?

Originally Posted by Peter Walker

Sounds to me like you have not yet sorted the channels. You can do this via the find button.

I did this by first going through all the channels and marking the ones I like as favorites. Then I changed the list to show just the favorites and then used Options/Reorder to sort the programs in the order I wanted. It is important to change the number associated with the channel. I ended up with a list like this:

input lag

Hi Peter and other (lucky) owners of PFL7606 ! I have question about gaming on this TV as some people complaints to "brother´s" LG LW650(570) high input lag even if in game mode. Can you please measure this lag or at least write your feeling with playing games on this TV ? Thanks

Gaming on the PFL6706 or pfl7666 ...

Originally Posted by theo2

Hi Peter and other (lucky) owners of PFL7606 ! I have question about gaming on this TV as some people complaints to "brother´s" LG LW650(570) high input lag even if in game mode. Can you please measure this lag or at least write your feeling with playing games on this TV ? Thanks

Hi I have a 42PFL7666t/12 at the moment but had a 42PFL7606 very recently and I game using a PS3 via a HDMI connection.

Gaming would be great BUT if I game in 3D mode the ambilights flash intermittently like a very bright camera flash!! its very annoying and quite shocking. This fault occurs even if you turn the ambilight feature off.

I have been trying to get Philips to help me with this issue on this forum (as well as trying all I can myself - including a TV swap) but have not been happy with their response. In fact Philips have not responded at all on this forum !!!!.

You can read all about it in my thread ......

Flashing ambilight issue while 3D gaming on my PS3

P.S its not just me who are affected by this - many others are struggling with this too.

Thanks, I did select the favorites but did not sort them Is there a Limit to max number of programs in the EPG? Mine only seems to show a limited number and is this why if not sorted it cannot show those further down teh list? Why though would it show many programs not in my favourites and also many double of the German ones like RTL2 etc.. show twice one below the other... In the help page it says select update program guide but there is no menu to do that. I am lost on how to show just the programs I want in the EPG and not all teh ones I do not want and many of which are not in my favorites.

Any ideas?

David,
On my TV, I can see about 100 channels in the EPG so that may be the limit. As far as I can see, the deciding factor is the number associated with the channel. Sort the programs as you want them with new numbers and all should be well. This can be changed manually and that is what I did.

To reorder the channels, I first made a list of which number I wanted to associate with each channel and then used the reorder function to move them. Use the "Find" button to list the channels, press "Options/Reorder" and find the channel you want to move. For example, say "BBC One HD" is found at channel 427, with the reorder function active, press OK on that channel. Now enter the new channel number, in this case "1", and press OK. The channel has now been moved. Repeat this for all the channels that interest you.

I hope this helps.

I will not have much time in the next few days, lots of things to do for Christmas, so I hope this helps.

I use a Wii for gaming which is connected via the component input. I have not noticed any issues with the TV in this mode. The only thing I do notice is that the TV does not smooth out the edges like it does on digital TV. In other words, standard definition TV from the internal tuner, etc. seems to be processed to make the video look almost as good as HD source video. This does not happen on the component and scart inputs.

Sorry I cannot help more, unless someone wants to give me a PS3 for Christmas :-)

I use a Wii for gaming which is connected via the component input. I have not noticed any issues with the TV in this mode. The only thing I do notice is that the TV does not smooth out the edges like it does on digital TV. In other words, standard definition TV from the internal tuner, etc. seems to be processed to make the video look almost as good as HD source video. This does not happen on the component and scart inputs.

Sorry I cannot help more, unless someone wants to give me a PS3 for Christmas :-)

Regards

Peter

Hi peter.

I too have 2 Wii consoles both hooked up through component cables. first Wii is hooked up to the living room Philips Ambilight TV (42pfl7962 - an older model) and the second one one is hooked up to the 42pfl7666t/12 (the new one I'm having issues with). I know what you mean about the edges not smoothed out on the new 7000 series. my 42pfl7962 does a much better job with the Wii.

As toengel says though you can improve the image with the settings. I found the Photo setting a good starting point but if you find a better one let me know.

I currently have it set to Game and there are lots of jagged edges to be seen. It would be great if they could be smoothed out, but not essential - the games can still be played. I had a quick look at the photo mode, but did not notice an improvement.

So I am open for any advice on how to improve the picture on my component input for my Wii.

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